Sublimation(62)

YJ


—you kiss her.



* * *



Maybe the girl on the bank of the river just gets him! Maybe he’s sick of his other responsibilities! Maybe he sees the other side of the shore and thinks to himself, God, I wish I were anywhere but here, and maybe it’s easier to embody that feeling in a person, to project it onto her, than it is to feel it abstractly, to admit to his inner self that he wants to leave.



* * *



The press of Soyoung’s lips against yours. Why did you do that. What are you doing here. This is stupid. This is an idiot move. You don’t know why you did this. She has very soft lips. You are angry at her. How dare she know the you that you no longer are, the you that you wish you were. How dare she read your mind. You had once dreamed of this in the stupid teenage way that you had also dreamed of what sex would feel like and also, more damnably, the imagined fantasy of where the line of her body against yours would meet, the warmth of it. Why did you do this? She feels nothing like Petra. Yes, you wanted this. You wanted this from the first moment you saw her again. You are trying so hard all the time to be normal about things. You don’t understand why your other self wouldn’t want Soyoung. What the difference is between you and him. You want her to stop fucking with your head. You feel lower than a worm for that thought; she is a real person with hopes and dreams but you are also a person with hopes and dreams and you are not your other self and you are tired of being conflated. Why is she being so familiar? She doesn’t know you.

Are you angry? You feel something. Probably anger. Or desire. What should you be feeling? You shouldn’t be feeling anything about her. You should be trying to dig yourself out of your hole. You don’t have time for anything like this. You should be thinking about your future. You are so tired of feeling trapped. You are so tired of never doing what you want to do. You are just really tired.





SOYOUNG-ROSE


Soyoung grabs YJ’s arm instinctively, her fingers gripping the fabric of his sleeve. YJ’s mouth is warm, tastes vaguely like Sichuan peppercorn and flesh, just in the way where he’s a human being, physical and real and made of meat and bone. This is reality. They exist in the world as real entities. She is real. She shouldn’t be kissing him back. Soyoung has a fiancé, and she loved him. This is unfair. This is cruel. This is analogous to cheating. This is the other version of her best friend. This is a stranger that she needs a favor from. This is a stranger who is asking her to commit corporate espionage.

Her teeth on his lip. He tastes like skin.



* * *



You meet a guy on the shoreline and you meet again, again, again. He’s divorced from your life, he doesn’t have any context for you. But he’s familiar. He does the same thing you do, he understands the rhythm of the water, the tides, and you don’t know if his family is wealthy, and he doesn’t know if you’re married, but none of that matters on the shore. How do you fall in love? Is it fast, or is it slow? Is it that you know the moment you lay eyes on someone? Is it built on shared familiarity? Is it that you can look across a room at someone and feel instant chemistry? Is it that the man on the shoreline is someone you remember playing with as a kid, in the sand next to the river?



* * *



Soyoung-Rose is not just some conglomerate ghost of past women’s wants, she is her own person and she is capable of her own desire outside of her dead selves. She is not Soyoung. She is not Rose. This is not a decision they would make in any world. There is no world where this happens if they were separated. She is a temporary entity that exists from the combination of two separate lives that should not have been reintegrated. She is a ghost and she is not a woman and ghosts are not able to commit sin.

So. She kisses him, open-mouthed.





YJ


You break away.

“You’re right. I don’t want to reintegrate,” you say. The confession falls from your mouth.

Soyoung stares at you. You stare at her. You look away.

“And I shouldn’t have done that. I’m really sorry.”

At first it had just been the sheer animal enjoyment of her lips against your lips, the ego-pleasure of the fact that she had kissed you back. Your knees are still touching. You want to pull back. That would be showing weakness. You stay very still.

“Why did you reciprocate?”

“I wanted to,” Soyoung says, and then laughs, a sharp clear sound. “Fuck. I shouldn’t have done that. Why did you do that? You started it! You asshole.”

You are a bad person. You are lower than a worm.

“I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t have done that.”

“You said you didn’t want to reintegrate.”

You blink. Why is this what she’s focusing on?

“I didn’t mean that.”

The lie is easy and automatic. She gives you a look that you can read as perfectly as if she is your instance and you are hers: She doesn’t believe you.

“Okay. I meant that sometimes it’s like I’m not really sure what I want out of life, and it seems that Yujin does. Or that he’s just waiting to take over my life. I guess I don’t really like that feeling. It’s easier just not to think about it.”